Metaphysical Furniture

  My opening weekend of college was about liberation. For 18 years, I lived in the same house. That's not a complaint so much as it is an expression of my reality. We didn't go on family vacations. I didn't party in high school, save for a couple of fun nights my senior year. Poplar Bluff, Missouri, was pretty much all I knew. When I did get to experience something out of town or even out of state, I always treated it as an adventure, knowing that Poplar Bluff awaited. The summer of 1985 started as a Cold War between me and my dad, who didn't want me to go to college. Tensions escalated when, after a heated discussion about the financial realities of paying for my education, he arrived home with a brand spanking new Toyota truck. It was nice, a real beauty. I was incensed. By Friday, August 17th, we had reached a kind of detente. We sold my car and put the money in my bank account. He begrudgingly gave me his blessing, knowing I would be leaving one way or another. In r...

  CHAPTER SIX: The Latchkey Condenser The park was quiet again. It was the kind of quiet you get after a missing stair—when you know something’s gone, but your body’s still expecting it to be there. The pigeons came back first. Then the wind. The boy on the swing landed hard enough to scrape his knee, which made his mother cry harder than he did. But the color never returned to the mulch. And where Randy had been under the oak tree was only a thin outline in the dirt, shaped like an armchair’s shadow.  The air still churned from where Randy had been. One second, he was sitting in the Armchair of Avoidance, blinking at something only he could see. The next, he and the chair had slipped backward—no, sideways —into a shimmering absence. I stared into the distortion, my jaw tightening. Calico was repacking her extraction spike when I saw it — a shimmer under the oak’s branches, like a mirage refusing to evaporate. The air bent, and with it came the smell of lavender, wet fur, and ...

Chapter 5: The Man in the Chair We found him in a park, or what used to be one. It still had the basic geometry—slide, sandbox, splash pad—but the colors were off. Too soft. Too polite. Like reality was apologizing for intruding. My metaphysical compass, a pocket watch with no hands and too many ticks, twitched in my coat. Not spinning. Not pointing. Just shivering like it was cold inside my pocket and knew why. “He’s here,” I muttered. Dr. Calico Verde had a toy of her own. At first glance, it looks like a vintage TV remote that’s been retrofitted with parts from a mood ring, a miniature harp, and a breathalyzer. The body is black Bakelite, smoothed by use. Tiny copper filigree lines run along the sides like veins. The tip glows faintly—not with light, but with hesitation. A glass orb is embedded near the top. Inside it floats a tiny, plush armchair—no bigger than a jellybean—which rotates slowly when furniture is nearby. The thing hums like a cassette rewinding. I had to know wha...